1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to a rotation module with a linked plugging and unplugging design, and more particularly to a rotation module, which is applied to a host case and is capable of simultaneously plugging/unplugging a cable attached to the rotation module into/from a slot or a socket of a motherboard when rotatably installing or disassembling the rotation module.
2. Description of the Related Art
A host of a personal computer, desktop computer, network server or network data storage device usually bears a case-like design. In a housing or a case of the host, critical components including the motherboard, disk drive and hard drive are installed. In addition to loading an operating system and associated operation programs required, the hard drive further provides a data or file storage function.
Conventionally, a host is fixedly mounted onto a corresponding fixing frame in a host case by a number of screws and then electrically connected to the motherboard. In some cases, a user may need to replace or read from multiple different hard drives operated by the same host, or to disassemble a hard drive for repair. Thus, installation or disassembly processes based on the above arrangement is timing consuming and complicated.
With respect to the assembly of a hard drive, one conventional solution for solving the above problem is to provide a drawable structure that can be directly drawn from a host case. In such structure, a corresponding drawable frame is fixedly mounted to a fixing frame in the host case, and a hard drive is placed into a housing that can be extracted from the drawable frame in a way that the hard drive can be readily installed to or disassembled from the host case. While inserting the hard drive into the drawable frame, the transmission connection for power and signals can also be completed.
The extraction or insertion of the above drawable structure is conducted in a vertical manner at one side of the host case. However, not only such arrangement may not be suitable for all types of computer hosts, but the drawable frame may occupy a large part of the internal space of the host. Current techniques further provide a design that rotatably installs or disassembles a hard drive. That is, a hard drive can be placed in a rotation module, and be installed to or disassembled from a motherboard in a rotating manner.
FIGS. 1A and 1B show schematic diagrams of rotatably installing or disassembling a rotation module 100. More specifically, FIG. 1A shows a schematic diagram of the rotation module 100 mounted onto a motherboard 10, and FIG. 1B shows a planar view of the rotation module 100 mounted onto the motherboard 10. As shown in FIG. 1A, the rotation module 100 covers a part of the motherboard 10 when mounted onto the motherboard 10, and is installed to or disassembled from the motherboard 10 by rotating upward or downward relative to a plane where the motherboard 10 is located.
As shown in FIG. 1B, unlike the conventional drawable structure, the rotation module shown, after being installed, requires a cable 11 (including power and signal transmission) for connecting to or plugging into a corresponding slot 12 on the motherboard 10. A common slot or socket is designed at a rear end of hard drive, in a way that the slot 12 is concealed by the volume of the rotation module 100, and the plugging/unplugging can only be performed manually within a limited operating space. Further, with such rotation design, a boot failure may be resulted as a user may be prone to forget to plug in the cable 11 after completing the installation, or related components may be damaged as a user may forget to unplug the cable 11 and directly disassemble the rotation module 100.
Therefore, there is a need for a solution that conveniently connects or plugs/unplugs a cable when a user rotatably installs or disassembles a corresponding hard drive.